became the campaign's biggest blunder. Results Per New York State law, Clinton and Lazio totals include their minor party-line votes: Liberal Party of New York and Working Families Party for Clinton, Conservative Party for Lazio. Analysis Clinton won the election on November 7 with 55 percent of the vote to Lazio's 43 percent, a difference larger than most observers had expected. Clinton won the traditionally Democratic base of New York City by large margins, and carried suburban Westchester County, but lost heavily populated Long Island, part of which Lazio represented in Congress. She won 13 of 61 counties, with surprising victories in Upstate counties, such as Cayuga, Rensselaer, and Niagara. Overall, she lost Upstate to Lazio by only 3 percentage points, to which her win has been attributed. In comparison with other results, Clinton's 12-point margin was smaller than Gore's 25-point margin over Bush in the concurrent presidential contest within the state; was slightly larger than the 10-point margin by which fellow New York senator Charles Schumer defeated incumbent Republican Al D'Amato in the hotly contested 1998 senate race; and was considerably smaller than the 47-point margin by which Senator Schumer won reelection in 2004 senate race against little-known Republican challenger Howard Mills. The victory of a Democrat in the Senate election was not assured, because in recent decades the Republicans had won about half the elections for governor and senator. Lazio's bid was handicapped by the weak performance of George W. Bush in New York in the 2000 election, but it was also clear Hillary Clinton had made substantial inroads in upstate New York prior to Lazio's entry into the race. Exit polls also showed a large gender gap with Clinton running stronger than expected among moderate women and unaffiliated women. Post-election charges Hasidic pardons In January 2001, two months after Hillary Rodham Clinton's election to the Senate, President Clinton pardoned four residents of the New Square Hasidic enclave in Rockland County, New York, who had been convicted of defrauding the federal government of $30 million by establishing a fictitious religious school. New Square had voted almost unanimously for Hillary Rodham Clinton in the New York Senate race. A lawyer following the matter stated that even if Clinton had promised to lobby her husband for clemency in exchange for the town's votes — a claim for which there was no proof — it would be difficult to establish a